


Encroach

by deathwailart



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 21:19:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1998216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders is slipping away and he doesn't know what to do without stepping over some invisible line.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: encroach</p>
            </blockquote>





	Encroach

The thing about Ruairidh is that he's spent years trying to take care of a family. Making sure mother had as many comforts as Lothering could provide and someone to talk to, especially when father was gone with Ruairidh knowing he was the spitting image of him. Buying Carver weapons and armour and keeping him out of the jobs he took on to pay the bills and keep the roof over their head so he had a nice clean record for joining the army. Teaching Bethany everything father had taught him and trying to make sure she didn't have to worry about anything even if he knew she did. They'd always worried about everything together, the little mage club of two mother would joke with tears in her eyes when she would watch them storing herbs – Bethany was better at selling their potions and poultices than he was.  
  
Ruairidh laughs and jokes his way through life but he always feels as though he's dreading water, barely keeping afloat. He lost father, he lost Bethany, he lost Carver to the Wardens and he lost mother too.  
  
He loves all of his friends in Kirkwall even if he tells Varric that it's a lot like herding cats, not that he actually knows about herding anything because he lived in Lothering, not Redcliffe, and he's never owned a cat but he knows Anders so he feels confident enough in the assessment. Privately he thinks Varric must be some sort of miracle worker to make Ruairidh Hawke sound like the suave dashing hero he is in all those ridiculous stories he tells. They're his family too and he doesn't lose them. He checks in on Merrill and always brings the dog because it gets her out of the house and away from that blasted mirror. He goes to the Chantry with food and coin and healing supplies to give to Sebastian to be given to those in need. He fights the Arishok for Isabela and gets her her ship because he's always happy to pay proper tribute to a queen of the seas. He drinks wine with Fenris and plays cards with him, tentatively asks if there's anything he needs. Aveline's married with a husband and a respectable job but he makes sure she keeps at it because Kirkwall needs a proper adult doing the right thing by the book. Varric is his partner in crime more often than not, the person he can go to for a laugh or when he needs to talk and feel better.  
  
Then there's Anders, the man he's fallen head over heels for, the man who is slipping through his fingers and he doesn't know what to do. He wants the same things, gives him a safe place to stay but Justice or Vengeance, it's always there and Anders isn't who he was, he's leaner and there are shadows in his eyes that won't leave him and Ruairidh can't lose him, not to himself, to the spirit, to the Templars.  
  
He doesn't know what to do and he wants his mother and father like when he was young, someone to brush his hair out of his face and kiss his cheek and tell him it'll be just fine, wait and see darling boy.  
  
But that's not how the world works and he damn well knows it so he wears old clothes and tells his hound he's on watch tonight, packing up food and drink and whatever else he thinks Anders might need and takes the passage through the wine cellar to the clinic. He'll probably fall asleep on a damp and musty bed that's lumpy enough he'll wake up stiff and sore and Anders won't have slept a wink, hunched over his manifesto, knuckles stained with ink but Ruairidh doesn't know what else to do and at least he's here.


End file.
